An industrial approach to drug discovery: a pharmacologist's eyeview.

1. The pressures on the pharmaceutical industry to produce novel, safe and effective therapeutic agents have provoked management to rethink the way in which drug discovery is undertaken. 2. Advances in drug therapy are likely to come from the application of new technologies and leading-edge science, perhaps in collaboration with academia. 3. Close collaboration between biologists and medicinal chemists is a proven way to discover new products. 4. The complexity of the modern industrial discovery process, due to the interaction of many disciplines, requires matrix-style management. 5. The early demonstration of efficacy in human subjects is considered essential for providing feedback to the basic scientists about the validity of hypotheses, and the relevance of the methods utilized, as well as whether a decision should be allowed to advance to full development.